What's Left
by Sebe
Summary: Sam's most recent break with reality has Dean thinking about all they've lost along the way, and all they still have. Spoiler for 7x10


Author's Notes: My answer to the gut-wrenching events of the last episode. It was beautiful, but awful. I don't think I can write anything really sappy specifically about Bobby right now, so this is what I came up with. The boys remembering everything that's happened and everything they've lost and trying to go on once again.

Summary: Sam's most recent break with reality has Dean thinking about all they've lost along the way, and all they still have.

**What's Left**

"Sammy?" Dean called patiently. He'd learned to be patient. Dean desperately wanted a drink to chase away the dread in his gut, but didn't dare with Sam in this state. He'd learned that too. "Sam, you with me?"

No answer as Sam's eyes continued to slowly scan the room. Tracking something or just taking in his surroundings, Dean still couldn't be sure which. Dean sighed and started to settle in and wait it out when Sam's voice came, scratchy like he'd been screaming even though he hadn't. Not this time.

"There were more of us."

Dean hated when he didn't understand his little brother right away. It usually stressed Sam out too, frustrated him. Sam shook his head shortly at Dean's incomprehension and looked away, eyes welling and sending an instant pain through Dean.

"Sammy…I don't understand. I'm trying, but…you gotta help me out here, dude."

"…There were-" Sam breaks off with a strangled sound of grief, putting his head in his hands and looking completely miserable as he just helplessly repeated. "…More. There were more…"

It took longer than he'd have liked, but Dean got it, shoulders immediately drooping. It was just him and Sam now, literally. Even when they were at their most desperate, there had always been someone somewhere. Their father, Ellen, Cas, Bobby-

Dean winced and was quick to blink away his own tears at just the thought of the man who had been their father more than their own. It was too fresh and it ached, something deep and fundamental in their lives gone. And, with him, the last soul that knew their story, knew _them_. Could tell people how Sam and Dean Winchester had been two lost boys, cursed and sold before they were born, that had grown up to fight and win against destiny and the Devil.

The last person to welcome them home from the war was gone.

Now, Dean thought, there would be no one to call to identify their bodies or build a pyre or mourn by their graves. Not that he had ever wished that on Bobby, but it was just the thought that, for the first time, they were really, utterly-

'_No.'_ Dean shook his head in defiance of his own thoughts. _'No, not yet.'_

"We're not alone." He told Sam firmly. "I'm here. You're here. Sammy-" Dean tilted Sam's head up till he could see his eyes. "We're not alone, Sammy."

Dean smiled as encouragingly as he could. It sucked being left behind, everyone they had loved lost to them. But the Winchesters, damaged among the damaged, were still standing. They didn't need anyone to burn them, to mourn them. Really, even from the beginning, it had always been just them; Dean and Sam. Even with their dad around, even with Bobby, the only constant from birth, to death, to hell, to now had been each other.

Every friend snatched away had torn something from them, caused new pain to flare. But those injuries, though never quite healed, had always scabbed over in time. They were painful wounds, but not fatal. Blood or skin, or even a limb lost, they could deal with. And what they couldn't live with, they still had.

Their hearts, souls, whatever it was that made them _them_, was still there. Though battered, they were inextricably bound to one another at the most basic, vital, unexplainable level. Even if they were torn apart, beaten into dust, sent to heaven or hell or purgatory or whatever else existed beyond the world they knew, that connection would never be severed. They would go on as the walking wounded they were. In that way, they were what many whispered tales in hunter's bars had begun to describe them as; invincible.

Breathing, living was a piercing pain, but Dean could see through it, Sam could too. Sam's eyes stayed watery, but that tortured expression eased a bit. He looked at Dean for a long time, encroaching madness eventually forced back once more. The shaggy mop that Dean complained about, but loved more than anything, nodded softly at Dean's words.

"Not alone." Sam repeated dutifully, pronouncing each syllable with utmost concentration and hard won clarity.

Dean smiled wider and it didn't even feel fake. Even as broken as they were, as Sam was, he hadn't given in. He pushed hell back day after day for Dean, to stay with his brother, and Dean was beyond proud of the kid he'd raised. He put his hand around the back of Sam's neck, and pulled him closer, leaning his forehead against Sam's.

"That's my boy."


End file.
